Navigating the Web

The Web-and the means of navigating it-also remained a focus for Microsoft
this week. Internet Explorer 6 and 7 continued to see their portion of the U.S.
browser market decline in May, according to new data from analytics company
StatCounter, even as Internet Explorer 8 continued to gain traction. Although
both IE 6 and 7 were used by far greater percentages a year ago, both browser
versions have seen their shares decline precipitously thanks to a combination
of IE 8 and rival browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox.
In May 2010, IE 6 claimed 4.47 percent of the browser market, trailing IE 7
with 16.64 percent and IE 8 with 30.49 percent. Contrast that to May 2009, when
IE 6 occupied around 11.47 percent of the market, IE 7 held 43.45 percent, and
IE 8 trailed with 8.5 percent.

A number of browser competitors have seen their own shares rise during this
yearlong period, including Firefox 3.6, which has risen to 19.85 percent market
share. According to StatCounter, Google Chrome 4.0 occupies around 6.53 percent
of the market, while Safari 4.0 owns 8.46 percent.

Microsoft claims that
the declines in IE 6 and IE 7 are welcome.
"The fall of both these versions was expected, and in fact we wish to
accelerate," Ryan Gavin, senior director of Internet Explorer, said in a June 1
statement. "Internet Explorer 8 is encouraging more and more people to move off
of Internet Explorer 6 onto a modern browser-meaning developers can spend more
time innovating and less time replicating workarounds."
For some Websites, IE 8 needs a feature called Compatibility View to render
all elements properly; Microsoft has been working to reduce the list of
Websites that require that feature. As of March, only around 19 percent of
high-traffic Websites rendered in IE 8 standards, a number the company seemed
highly intent on increasing.

Despite Microsoft's desire to move its browser users away from IE 6, the
company has also pledged to support the browser until April 2014, when it
reaches a preordained phase-out point.
"We committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of
the product," Dean Hachamovitch, a member of Microsoft's Internet Explorer
team, wrote in an Aug. 10 post on Microsoft's official Internet Explorer blog,
after a summer in which some Websites publicly stated they would stop
supporting IE 6. "As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest
version. We make it easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the
choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC."
While Microsoft could potentially take some cheer in IE 8's market
share-despite the increasingly robust presence of its competitors in the
space-Internet Explorer also raised the prospect of a public relations headache
this week: Google resurrected its January security breach, which took advantage
of an IE vulnerability to steal some of the search-engine giant's intellectual
property, as a pretext for reportedly transitioning its employees away from
Windows-based systems.
While Google itself seemed reluctant to confirm the reports, Microsoft
decided to confront the issue in a more head-on manner.
"There's been some coverage overnight about the security of Windows and
whether or not one particular company is reducing its use of Windows," Brandon
LeBlanc, a spokesperson for Microsoft, wrote
June 1 on the official Windows blog. "When it comes to security, even
hackers admit we're doing a better job making our products more secure than
anyone else. And it's not just the hackers; third-party influentials and
industry leaders like Cisco tell us regularly that our focus and investment
[continue] to surpass others."
The possibility exists that Google's alleged Windows ban comes not from
security concerns but out of a need internally to clear the way for its Chrome
OS, a cloud-based operating system that will be released to the public later in
2010.
"I have to wonder how much of this is due to competitive drivers versus
genuine desire to secure Google," IDC
analyst Al Hilwa told eWEEK. "After all, Google has operating systems,
browsers, tools and productivity software that [are] head-to-head competitive
with Microsoft, and so this may make sense for them."
Given that competition between Microsoft and Google, executives for the
latter may have seen their shift to Chrome OS as an ideal opportunity to fire a
broadside at the main pillar of Microsoft's business.

Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.